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Ok this is hardcore. I workout at a gym with only option of increasing weight is 2.5 lbs on each side.

I do feel if I can add 5 lbs after a month or two I'm doing ok. I don't strive for strength, but more so want the 'look'. Not sure at this point if there is a difference in lifting techniques to acheive one without the other.

Spending $16 on industrial washers is not that hard core. Buy 6 2" ID washers from McMaster Carr. They're close enough to 5/8lb each that you can then progress by 1 washer at a time (nominally 1.25 lbs).

Unless you're pretty strong already, the most effective protocol for getting "the look" is to get stronger.

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Deadlifts are a fantastic exercise, but you can definitely work the same muscles and get strong without them. I did a blog post on this topic a while ago: Bodyweight Deadlift Alternatives

Having said that, you would probably benefit from working one-on-one with a (competent) personal trainer to improve your technique. The potential to get injured is higher with weights, but people find ways to hurt themselves with bodyweight training, too.

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they couldn't be more different."

"You can have anything you want, but you can't have everything you want."

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1. Are you 100% sure your back was in an equally hard extension as the previous reps on the bad rep?
2. Is your bar path vertical? Did the injury happen on the way up, or on the way down?

That's the problem. The program puts deadlift after having already wore yourself out with squats and presses. Who is going to be perfect an hour into working out 100% of the time? It's my glutes and hamstrings that fail, at least that is what my chiropractor told me. And the first time I hurt my back it was putting it down while this time it was picking it up. I don't feel comfortable doing an exercise where 100% perfection is required otherwise you get serious injury.

i train with a trainer once a week and we do 10-15 reps. i just do it coz he tells me to. i have never specifically told him that i want to get strong but he definitely is more into that progression. i am not usually good at doing what i am told otherwise. i have made and am making significant strength gains so i am all good and i also really enjoy the variety of things we do.

Plus you have a nice body. This sounds so much more reasonable. I was thinking last night that what I think these templates actually are doing with MY body is they just work me up to the edge of what I'm already capable of but don't really build that much new strength. The stress time is so small and stimulates a muscle fiber type I don't have a lot of and stimulates a hormonal reaction that is weak in myself being so old and female. If I did more reps at a weight where reaching failure is due to becoming tired rather than due to having whole muscle groups just give up, then I think the whole thing would be more effective for me. I'd probably get a better body, too. Hell, I sound like fucking cross-fit. If only cross-fit wasn't so spastic with the variation.

My back went out at a weight I had done multiple times before. I think I was just tired, and I lost form - even though I had lifted it before. Result=injury. I had been reading all these things about adding weight and thought if I wasn't adding weight I wasn't progressing. Lesson learned was I'm still kicking ass by just lifting. Go your own pace. Do what you can without risk of injury. If it means doing 8-10 reps or more vs. 5 at a lighter weight, do it. Add weight when you feel you need to add weight. I see my body changing for the better without having to add weight to the bar each week. Just keep lifting what you can and you will continue to get strong.

Yeah, that's me. I'm going to develop my own less aggressive program. I have no strength if I'm injured. I think I just want to look and good and if strength happens, fine.

Deadlifts are a fantastic exercise, but you can definitely work the same muscles and get strong without them. I did a blog post on this topic a while ago: Bodyweight Deadlift Alternatives

Having said that, you would probably benefit from working one-on-one with a (competent) personal trainer to improve your technique. The potential to get injured is higher with weights, but people find ways to hurt themselves with bodyweight training, too.

Thanks Al. I think some of those deadlift alternatives are what I need. My glutes and hamstrings need work. After my back injury my butt is more sore than my back is. I started strength training because I was too weak to do your exercises. Been hoping I could get strong enough to do bodyweight stuff. I can do 10 pushups now. I used to not be able to do any. I can't do a pullup yet but I can do negatives with a neutral grip one at a time with a long rest in between and I can hold myself at the top for pretty long, at least on the first one. I may never be able to do dead-hang pullups though. My arms pop right out of their sockets if I even get close to the bottom. The barbell training has helped me build enough core strength to get close to being able to do bodyweight stuff.

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That's the problem. The program puts deadlift after having already wore yourself out with squats and presses. Who is going to be perfect an hour into working out 100% of the time? It's my glutes and hamstrings that fail, at least that is what my chiropractor told me. And the first time I hurt my back it was putting it down while this time it was picking it up. I don't feel comfortable doing an exercise where 100% perfection is required otherwise you get serious injury.

Although I respect ripp and ss, this is why I prefer a push/pull split to break things up. My opinion is, and i could be wrong, that you simply can't give 100% to the squat and then in the same workout safely give 100% on deadlifts. After squats, your legs, lower back and core should be sufficiently fried. No way should you then be deadlifting. Always seemed like a bad idea to me. I didn't do that back in the day, and I don't do it now.

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Plus you have a nice body. This sounds so much more reasonable. I was thinking last night that what I think these templates actually are doing with MY body is they just work me up to the edge of what I'm already capable of but don't really build that much new strength. The stress time is so small and stimulates a muscle fiber type I don't have a lot of and stimulates a hormonal reaction that is weak in myself being so old and female. If I did more reps at a weight where reaching failure is due to becoming tired rather than due to having whole muscle groups just give up, then I think the whole thing would be more effective for me. I'd probably get a better body, too. Hell, I sound like fucking cross-fit. If only cross-fit wasn't so spastic with the variation.

we're the same age and i have gymed it for years. i also walk/hike lots and that really is my exercise of preference. never a sprinter, more a distance runner when i was young with muscle definition. i've done the whole 3-5 reps of a nasty nasty heavy weight on the main athletic lifts but i didnt enjoy it at all. i seemed to spend most of my gym time standing around between sets. i also, lmao, until relatively recently have had a deep irrational fear of getting too big. i know it is laughable but there have been women at all the gyms i go to, who dont take steroids and do big weights and have biceps or quads maybe 2x the size of mine whilst being slender overall. i also have to say, body weight exercises for me kick ass on the gym stuff in terms of difficulty of execution. they are way hard but in a different way so i try to do a mix of both. just coz i enjoy it and the gym is too far away to go 3x a week. what i aim for is maintainability. can i see myself being able to do this in 10-20 yrs time sorta thing.

Deadlifts are a fantastic exercise, but you can definitely work the same muscles and get strong without them. I did a blog post on this topic a while ago: Bodyweight Deadlift Alternatives

i do one legged warriors with a weight out of my BBY book. Here's mark lauren doing a one legged warrior. once you can do that, all you do is hold a weight above your head while you are bending. i use a dumbbell. it's maybe not as hard core as a proper deadlift but you work balance and alot of other things at the same time. 1-legged Warriors - YouTube

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i do one legged warriors with a weight out of my BBY book. Here's mark lauren doing a one legged warrior. once you can do that, all you do is hold a weight above your head while you are bending. i use a dumbbell. it's maybe not as hard core as a proper deadlift but you work balance and alot of other things at the same time. 1-legged Warriors - YouTube

All good stuff Seas.

He uses a similar movement in his yayog program, the romanian deadlift.

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He does a hop at the end which is interesting. i'd prob fall over if i did that with a weight above my head lol have you seen him bar hopping? unreal!Bar Hop - YouTube

Lol yeah, I hadn't actually watched that far. I was expecting it to be the same as the demo video clip in the yayog iPhone app where he just stands up right an, switches legs and goes back down. I also do that with my 20kg sandbag someone's.

Must try it with the jump now :-)
The bar hopping is cool too!

If you're interested in my (very) occasional updates on how I'm working out and what I'm eating click here.

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I'm happy to hear someone knows what I went through. I think if I ever deadlift again I will NOT progress like I have been. I will get to a weight that feels fairly challenging and just add reps.

I honestly believe that all these programs designed with men in mind are just wrong. I feel this intuitively. They just don't work right. I feel intuitively that the weight should not be heavier and heavier all the time. There needs to be more reps. I shouldn't be working right at the edge of failure because failure is instantaneous, no warning. I hurt my back deadlifting 150lbs. The week before I deadlifted 155lbs no problem. I can't be so close to failure if failure is going to come without warning and break my body in half.

I know this is exactly what happened. I had done several sets at lower weights and two reps at the weight that hurt me, all with perfectly fine form. Then the bad lift happened and it was like my arms were pulled down, my back couldn't hold straightness and it felt like my body just came apart. Why would that happen so suddenly? The other two reps were like eh, no big deal, I can crank out 5 of these no problem. Then boom. Broken body. One thing that really bugs me about lifting weights is how the failures come upon me suddenly without any warning. One rep is strong, the next one fails completely.

I have not made any progress in presses in several months. Am I still a novice? I remember benching 75 x 5 before Christmas break. I attempted to do it last Monday and failed. Same story with OHP. I deloaded severely after my first back injury and have finally worked back up to almost where I was only to fail again.

Dillberryhound I disagree with your mix-it-up approach and I know that I am not overtrained. I have felt what overtraining feels like. Mixing it up with variety just for variety's sake isn't going to get you anywhere. You have to have a goal. My goal was to get stronger and become more muscular. The muscular part has been working fairly well. Maybe I just need the more muscular part without the strength.

I'll just throw this out there as a cautionary tale, call it an n=1 example.

The only time I've hurt myself deadlifting was when I would go for reps, especially at a weight I could do 10-15 times. Why? Because its still fatiguing, but now you also lose mental focus because it takes so long, and the weight is so light that you stop respecting it.

I've never hurt myself on a heavy single or double. Of course, after hurting myself a few times, learned to feel when my back starts to round and to quit early. The last time was while doing BBB deads after squats, after taking 15 days off for vacation. Came right back where I left off, and tried to power through 225x5x10

Second set, on rep seven, going quickly, I felt a sharp pain in my low back, and knew what I'd done.

I now limit deadlifts to sets of 5-7 so that I do not lose me two focus.

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Deadlifts are very form/set-up sensitive - at least at weight levels they are useful. You need to be near perfect everytime you pull. With reps, in the sense of bicep curl reps/sets scheme, you run a higher risk of injury.
It is dangerous to make a "work out" out of DL i.e. sweating, huffing and puffing and the feeling that you "exercised".

Few but ripe.

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Steve Maxwell suggests the pistol squat as a suitable substitute. In fatc, he states something like they may be the only lower body exercise you need assuming you are otherwise active/sprinting etc. They can eliminate many bad habits that aklso might have been developed using the dead lift.

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Steve Maxwell suggests the pistol squat as a suitable substitute. In fatc, he states something like they may be the only lower body exercise you need assuming you are otherwise active/sprinting etc. They can eliminate many bad habits that aklso might have been developed using the dead lift.

The deadlift makes your back really strong. I fail to see how the pistol squat does the same.